Residence Fraud Costs More Than You Think

School Address Fraud in the U.S.

As mentioned in the article in Fraud Magazine’s Aug. 2014 article, “Investigating Residency Fraud”, by Philip A. Becnel IV, address fraud affects those who rightfully pay taxes to attend these schools and are being forced out by those who do not belong there.

Fraud, Fraud Everywhere

Address fraud is prevalent throughout the U.S. but one area that experiences an extremely high percentage of this fraud is in District of Columbia. The District has approximately 35,000 public charter school students where the tuition can be as high as $15,000 per student. If only 1% of those students are non-residents, the financial impact on DC taxpayers would be more than $5 million a year.

From Philadelphia, PA to Beverly Hills, CA, there are those facing fines and jail time for misleading school districts into believing their utility bills and inaccurately filled out forms are viable pieces of address identification. Some districts have gone as far as implementing anonymous tip lines with the promise of monetary rewards, should the perpetrator get caught.

There is the debate that the quality of education in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods need to be drastically improved, so there is no need for this address fraud exercise. We are sure to hear more about this soon.

If we truly want educational technology to take root in schools and finally live up to the promise we've been expecting for more than a decade, schools need to develop a cadre of well-trained tech instructional coaches.

A massive international analysis finds more screen time is associated with a lower sense of well-being among teenagers, but the effects are too small to require policy changes, according to a study in the journal Nature Human Behavior.